Hello again!
I have to confess that I have a small sentimental attachment to Nassau.
You see, one of my closest friends (we were actually roommates for a bit) from my undergrad moved to Nassau at about the same time I got a job that required me to visit Nassau. Even better, she’s actually a teacher at one of the schools that I was visiting, St. Andrew’s International School of the Bahamas, so not only was I able to visit her while I was there, but I was also able to visit her students.
(Aside: I’m not sure how excited she’ll be after my visit – I promised her students that she would sing our school song, the “Oil Thigh“, and the Math cheers. All I can remember of the latter is “sine, sine, cosine, sine…3.14159…go math!”)
Anyway, I had a great visit to St. Andrew’s, as well as a great visit at Lyford Cay International School, which is on the other end of the island. There was a bit of a problem with my shipment of materials, so I as I promised in my presentation, I wanted to include a few links to important information while you wait for my books to arrive. (Just a reminder for all of you that you should be able to collect them from your guidance counsellor over the next day or two) In particular, I wanted to draw tour attention our admission website, which is home to information about applying to Queen’s, admission requirements (by program), and financial assistance. Also, there were a few questions about the actual application form, which you’ll find at the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre’s website. As we discussed in our presentation, another good resource would be to look through the academic calendars for each faculty, so that you can get an idea of the specific courses within your program. I would also recommend going to our list of programs and researching the many, many opportunities available to you. This site also highlights programs, but in a bit more depth (and it includes more departments and specialized programs).
In terms of programs of interest, the big ones were the usual suspects: Commerce, Engineering, and Science (particularly Life Science and Biochemistry), but there was also quite a bit of interest in the Arts (particularly Global Development Studies) and Computing (particularly Biomedical Computing and Cognitive Science). Students also had a lot of questions about student services, both academic and non-academic. As I promised, you’ll find links here to such services as the Queen’s University International Centre, Career Services, Health, Counselling, and Disability Services, and the Learning Commons, which as you might remember, is home to such services at the Writing Centre, Library Services, Learning Strategies and Development, the Adaptive Technology Labs, and IT Services. There was also a lot of interest in student life on campus, particularly athletics (which, as a reminder, includes both varsity/inter-university and intramural options) and clubs on campus. I know that students St. Andrew’s and Lyford Cay have recently participated in volunteer projects in Guatemala and Uganda, so one club that might be of particular interest is the Queen’s Project on International Development (QPID), which raises funds and awareness about development issues in Canada and around the world, as well as sending student teams to participate in projects during the summers. It’s a great club and one worth checking out! (For those students at St. Andrew’s, Ms. Greenberg worked with QPID during her time at Queen’s – you can add it to the list of things I told you to ask her about!)
Time to catch another flight! Until next time…
Danyal Martin – Admission Coordinator
P.S. Since I got a lot of excited questions about winter, I thought I’d post another photo!
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